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Thursday, 2 March 2017

Success, followed closely by failure

Alex had his first toileting success yesterday under the new system (screentime for toilet). Unfortunately, it was followed swiftly by an accident. (Then two more through the rest of the evening.)Now, this is where the balancing programs part comes in. For a toileting success, Alex earns a half hour of screentime and he would have also been able to access his regular after school 30 minutes of screentime. However, I could tell that he'd done an accident after about 20 minutes.Here's the dilemma: do I interrupt his 30 minutes of earned screentime to check for an accident? (Once I check and find one, screentime is immediately over.) Do I allow him to have his full hour? Do I stop him after half an hour?I decided to give him the half hour, then check. So we dutifully went back to the toilet and had another try at sitting. No success, although clearly he still needed to go since we had more accidents through the evening.For the reward to be successful, it has to be desired and applied consistently. Giving him his half hour gave him a taste of screentime and will hopefully encourage him to try again. (The concern is that taking it away could discourage him, but that's not how it's worked in the past.)